


Lathbora Viran

by My_Immoral



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Bisexual Cassandra Pentaghast, Bisexual Female Character, Casual Sex, F/F, Femslash, Kissing in the Rain, Lesbian Lavellan, Multi, Oral Sex, POV Bisexual Character, POV Lesbian Character, Porn with Feelings, Strap-Ons, bisexual morrigan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 16:06:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14429220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Immoral/pseuds/My_Immoral
Summary: Lavellan is pining for the woman she thinks she cannot have. Cassandra misses the woman she thinks she does not love. Morrigan is only here to help.





	Lathbora Viran

Even high in these forgotten mountains, a summer heatwave was a relentless enemy, one the Inquisition seemed stubbornly set on beating. It was not a war they could win.

Three soldiers fainted in their armor over the course of a day. Cullen had to be barred from the war room until he came back wearing something that hadn’t once been an apex predator. The frost mages started an illicit trade in cooling amulets behind the Grand Enchanter’s back that nearly bankrupted the diplomatic corp. Duties were shirked, windows were pried open, and any task that could be relocated to the cool, sunless bowels of the castle had been — by magic, if necessary. Still, the Inquisition pressed on with a chin lifted high.

_Shemlen don’t have the sense the gods gave bogfishers_ , Lavellan thought, and then she ordered them all to take the rest of the day off.

Hours later, Lavellan leaned back in her chair and fanned herself with a sheet of paper covered in scratched-out notes. Correspondence, maps, and tomes of history and genealogy walled her desk away from the rest of the room. As a spy, she’d thought she’d learned her share about the intricacies of shemlen politics, but it turned out that it only became infinitely more delicate and nuanced when you were expected to handle it out in the open.

With a deep sigh, she tossed her quill onto the desk and rubbed her temples. She couldn’t keep concentrating on drafting letters that Josephine would no doubt re-write for her anyway. Instead, she poured herself a goblet of wine, rested her elbows on a windowsill, and leaned out to try to tempt a passing breeze. Her eyes were closed. Down below, she could hear Cassandra grimly beating a practice dummy. She smiled to herself. Drills had been called off, which, to Cassandra, meant that they had been called off for everyone else.

A harsh crack made Lavellan open her eyes and glance down. One of the dummies had lost an arm and now listed to one side. Cassandra stood over it with her practice sword gripped in both hands like she had just felled a dragon. As a concession to the heat, she had stripped down to just chausses and a tunic. Sweat soaked the collar. Under her lightweight sleeves, her arms were corded with muscles Lavellan didn’t know people had. Lavellan had a brief, thrilling vision of being pinned to her bed by those arms. She swallowed.

If only the weather were the only thing distracting her from her paperwork.

“Wise of you to hide away. The Orlesians are moaning like sows over every little thing,” said Morrigan, drifting into the room with all the good timing of bad news. She tossed a bag onto the divan and went to pour herself a goblet of wine, too.

Lavellan sighed again. How she wished for creaky doors. “You might knock next time.”

“I might.” Morrigan came and leaned against the wall beside Lavellan where she could have a view of Cassandra dutifully righting the dummy and attacking it again. Something about the way her eyes swept over the scene made Lavellan bristle.

“Quite a woman,” Morrigan said over the rim of her goblet.

“I’m fortunate to have her at my side.”

“Mm. But you’d rather have her in your bed.”

Those golden eyes settled on Lavellan now. Once, when she was a girl, Lavellan had stumbled on a mountain cat feeding on a dead halla. It had looked at her this same way. It occurred to her that she had often caught Morrigan looking at her like this from across the war room, but so close, it gained a new intensity. She turned away from the window and tried not to shiver.

“Eat something, Morrigan. All that blood magic is making you hallucinate,” she said.

“Is it?” Morrigan widened her eyes in mock alarm. “Did I also hallucinate our dear Cassandra letting you down gently the other afternoon?”

“That,” said Lavellan, slowly, “was a private conversation.”

“In the future, if you wish a conversation to be private, do not conduct it beneath my window.”

They were not of a height, which was a pity, because Lavellan wanted to look down her nose at this awful woman more than she had ever wanted anything. Morrigan smirked at her and settled herself on the divan.

“I am concerned for you, Herald,” she said. “‘Tis unwise to keep yourself wound so tight. Thedas has had enough dread Inquisitors taking their ‘frustrations’ out on every mage and heretic they see.”

Lavellan snorted and sat on the edge of her bed, where she could keep an eye on the other woman. “Are you suggesting I would commit atrocities because I’m not having enough sex?”

“I am suggesting that you are distracted, and power distracted can be manipulated.” Still smirking, Morrigan added, “Have a tryst or two. Release this tension. There are plenty of glowering, dark-haired women with fine cheekbones who would happily fall into your bed.”

“Oh? Yourself included?” Lavellan asked coyly.

“If you like, yes. ‘Tis what I came to offer.”

A flush that was no byproduct of the oppressive heat flared in Lavellan’s cheeks. She would be lying if she said Morrigan weren’t beautiful — she was very beautiful, in that feverish way all deadly things are. For a heartbeat, she imagined the two of them together, those nails dragging across her back, the heady scent of herbs and magic enveloping her like a cloak. Sensations she didn’t dare name coiled in her stomach.

“Bold of you to warn me that I can be manipulated and then offer to do it yourself,” she managed to say.

“Honest, too. Others won’t be.” Morrigan laughed when Lavellan frowned. She had a singularly unpleasant laugh. “Don’t fret, Herald. The things I want lie beyond your power.”

How reassuring. Lavellan shifted on the bed. She badly wanted to get up and pace. “So why, then? What would you get from it?”

Without answering, Morrigan rose to her feet and walked to the bed. Lavellan’s heart skipped. They were both silent for a moment while they considered each other. Then, slowly, Morrigan leaned in and traced a line down Lavellan’s throat with one long finger. Her touch left fire and ice in its wake.

“Perhaps I, too, am power distracted. Or perhaps I’m bored,” Morrigan whispered. Her breath tickled Lavellan’s shoulder.

“I can’t play games with you,” Lavellan said softly. “I don’t have the time or the will for it.”

“No games. No expectations,” the blood mage murmured in her ear. She bit it lightly, which made Lavellan gasp. She pulled away so they were eye-to-eye. “Would you like me to stop?”

The gods forgive her, but if she stopped, Lavellan might scream. She couldn’t remember the last time her skin had touched skin without intending to do harm. It left an ache.

“Just two people taking the edge off?” she asked.

“Yes. Is that what you want?”

“I…” The thing she wanted was the thing she could not have. Perhaps this would serve, though. Perhaps what she wanted was to stop thinking.

“Yes,” she said. “It is.”

Morrigan stroked Lavellan’s throat again. Without meaning to, Lavellan tilted her head back, exposing more of her neck and chest. Morrigan thumbed the divot above Lavellan’s breastbone for a moment and then bent her head to Lavellan’s throat to kiss her. Her lips were cool against Lavellan’s wild pulse. The Herald would have shivered then, but she feared that if she moved, the air itself would shatter.

“Good.” Morrigan smiled a hungry smile. “Now take off your belt.”

* * *

“It’s all the same to me, Seeker, but you might want to come inside before you get heat stroke.”

Varric leaned out of the tavern window above her with an ale in hand. When Cassandra glanced up, he saluted her with his mug. Tipsy conversations and a bard’s high, warbling voice drifted out over his shoulder. She cursed. Couldn’t she take out her frustrations without an audience?

“Did that training dummy insult your mother?” Varric asked when she didn’t answer, nodding at the one with the dangling arm.

Her breath was too short to reply, so she just glared while she rolled her shoulders, which were getting stiff. It wasn’t an articulate anger that drove her to beat the wooden enemies laid out around her. Every strained muscle was a punishment. Every stroke was a blow to her horrible, conflicted heart.

It had been simpler before this heatwave. Her soldiers had drilled to her satisfaction. Her reports had been filed neatly and on time. She had kept herself too busy to think about the crestfallen look Lavellan had so carefully folded away after their conversation or about the agony Cassandra felt whenever she remembered it. She didn’t have time for that. There were armies to be led and strategies to devise. There was a war on, for the Maker’s sake.

But a few nights ago she had awoken from a fraught, sweaty dream in which Lavellan had used her slender hands, so deft at knife-work, somewhat differently than she did in the waking world. It had been…pleasant, thrillingly so, but too brief to satisfy the taut and unfamiliar need that it seeded in her. Almost unconsciously, her hands had drifted to touch herself where the dream Lavellan had, and she had imagined that silver tongue put to another purpose. Thinking of it in daylight made Cassandra’s cheeks ruddy — and worse, she couldn’t seem to stop.

Hence the campaign against the training dummies.

“How is Lavellan holding up in this weather?” Varric continued blithely. “We Marchers aren’t built for it. I feel like a hog on a spit.”

Of course he would be fixated on the one person she was trying not to think about. He was maddening. Cassandra scowled and swung again. She brought the sword down so hard that the wood splintered.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “The Herald hasn’t summoned me today.”

“Really? Is she sick?”

“I don’t follow her around like a spaniel!” Cassandra shouted. She smacked the side of the dummy with all the force she could muster. The dummy fell over again. The blade itself snapped in half, one end swinging from the other by a single strip of wood.

Varric coughed. “Uh, Seeker, are you all right?”

“No.” She threw the ruined sword on the ground. “No, I am not.”

Without a backward glance, she stormed back to the keep. Damn everything. She needed to talk to Lavellan.

* * *

No less than six Orlesian viscounts tried to bribe Cassandra to bring a message up to the Herald, who was absolutely not taking messages, as she wove through Skyhold and to the staircase that would carry her to Lavellan’s chambers. The shapes of her own apologies and confessions pushed their concerns right out of her mind. Her pulse drummed a soldier’s march in her ears. It was no use planning another speech. When she saw Lavellan, surely she would know what to say.

At Lavellan’s door, she paused, ready to knock, but suddenly afraid. What if Lavellan was angry with her? What if her interest had cooled? Or what if it hadn’t, and they kissed, and all the things Cassandra thought she felt for her Herald evaporated like that half-remembered dream? Cassandra stood there and ground her teeth. She was no coward. If this went poorly, she would face it like a warrior.

She lifted her hand to knock when she heard a sharp cry. Her breath caught in her lungs. The door was unlocked when she tried the handle — had someone slipped in ahead of her? A thousand possible threats blinked and whined at the back of her head, but she swept them aside. Whatever was in that room, she was certain of one thing: it would not hurt her Herald. With one hand on her sword, Cassandra pushed the door open, crept up the steps, and peered between the banisters.

She bit down hard on her tongue to keep from gasping at what she saw.

The afternoon light slanting through the windows shimmered on Lavellan’s slick, naked back. She was lying on her bed with her face turned away from the stairs, her unmarked hand tangled in her own dark hair, the other pinned to the mattress by the woman behind her. Morrigan? The blood mage had some sort of harness strapped around her hips, which were moving against Lavellan’s in a slow rhythm that seemed to draw groans out of the Herald like poison from a wound. She reached out and dragged her fingers down Lavellan’s back, leaving five long scratches behind.

“Not so fast,” she crooned when Lavellan tried to wrench her pinned hand away. “Let me.”

Her hand slipped between Lavellan’s legs and began to move in small, subtle ways that made Lavellan’s moans rise in pitch. The Herald shifted her weight slightly and took control of the motion of her muscular thighs, sliding back and forth, faster and faster. Morrigan made an amused noise, but her breath was ragged, too, and a bright flush had risen on her cheeks.

I should leave, right now, Cassandra thought, but she was as pinned as Lavellan’s marked hand. What if she made a noise and they saw her retreating? If she stayed, though — and a perverse part of her wanted to — they would definitely catch her when they were done, and there would be no facing Lavellan after that. Her throat tightened unexpectedly. _Lavellan._ Cassandra had broken the Herald’s heart, and now that hers had changed, it was too late for second chances.

Another sudden cry made her flinch and glance up as she eased herself back down the stairs. Morrigan had pulled away from Lavellan and flipped her long, black hair over her shoulder so it not longer covered her breasts. A wet…instrument hung from the harness between her legs, which she unbuckled. Lavellan rolled onto her back with an undignified noise.

“Not yet — I didn’t —,” she panted.

“Don’t whine, Herald,” Morrigan said tartly. “I’m not finished with you.”

Morrigan knelt at the foot of the bed and brought her mouth to Lavellan’s thighs. She kissed one, then the other, inching lower and lower until she was between them. While Cassandra watched, mortified, her tongue slid out from between her lips. Lavellan clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle herself. She clenched the blue coverlet with her other hand. Whatever Morrigan was doing with her mouth, it was making the Herald writhe. Suddenly, her back arched. Her face was screwed up in a kind of agony. Tears slid down her cheeks. Only when she collapsed, boneless and trembling, did Morrigan sit back with a satisfied smirk.

The blood mage climbed back onto the bed and straddled Lavellan. “My turn.”

The Herald laughed breathlessly and mumbled her assent. One of her hands slid up Morrigan’s side and massaged her breasts while the other slipped between her legs. As Morrigan sighed and relaxed into Lavellan’s touch, she flipped her hair out of her eyes and looked directly at Cassandra.

The woman who had once slain dragons turned and fled.

* * *

“Cassandra! Wait!”

Lavellan scrambled upright. If she wasn’t already dead, she wanted to be right now. Her bed was a mess of wrinkled coverlets and damp patches of sweat and arousal. She herself was naked, small breasts heaving and exposed, her thighs parted and wet. It was catastrophic for Cassandra to see her like this. It was beyond her wildest dreams.

Morrigan got up, wiped herself off with one of Lavellan’s bath towels, and flopped down on the divan with a huff. “She’s gone, Herald.”

“You knew.” Lavellan rounded on her with the kind of feral snarl she hadn’t indulged since before the Conclave. “You _knew_ she was there.”

“For a few minutes.” She shrugged airily. “You didn’t seem to want anything to be interrupted.”

“Get out.”

Morrigan raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t argue. She stretched and began languidly putting on her ragged clothes and packing up the bag she’d brought. As she did, she said, “A word of advice, Herald?”

Lavellan, who was picking through her own discarded clothes, grunted in response.

“That woman loves you.”

Lavellan froze.

“Don’t say that.” Her voice was rough with far more than the aftershocks. “Don’t you dare.”

“’Tis no lie, Herald. You saw her face, too.”

“No.” Lavellan shook her head and yanked on her trousers. Her eyes were burning. “You’re wrong. She told me she wasn’t interested in women, much less —.” _Much less a skinny elven spy who doesn’t even believe in her Maker._ She swallowed. “People don’t just change their minds about that.”

"Don't they?" Morrigan asked dryly. "Do you think anyone is born knowing exactly what they want?"

Lavellan paused. Her own wants had never been much of a priority in her life. As a child, her light tread and her discreet tongue had singled her out for service to Dirthamen, the god of secrets, and no one had asked her if it was what she wanted, not even the night she was given her vallaslin. She was a daughter of the clan, a dagger in the gods’ hands. Daggers did not want.

She had, though. From the moment she and Cassandra had looked at each other as allies, she had. She had turned over every flirtation that had not been rebuked like she was cutting open river clams, searching for the rare pearl. It had been lathbora viran, the longing for what would always be out of her reach — a doomed thing. But for a few months, before it had been dashed to pieces at her feet, she had known exactly what she wanted.

“Find her, Herald. Ask her again,” Morrigan said, pulling Lavellan from her thoughts. A small, sad frown creased her forehead as she began to descend the stairs. “Sometimes we don’t know what we want until it has already slipped through our fingers.”

* * *

For a woman almost as famous as Lavellan herself, Cassandra Pentaghast was hard to find when she wanted to disappear. Her quarters were neatly swept, but empty. The rest of the council, which was flouting her orders and carrying on a meeting in the cellars, had no idea where she was. Even Varric, who usually had a finger in every pie, hadn’t seen her since she’d destroyed the practice ring that afternoon. Lavellan stomped through every storeroom and turret in Skyhold and didn’t find a hint of her.

The pennants on the towers snapped in a sudden, cold wind. On the northern horizon, clouds roiled against the darkening sky, and Lavellan caught a glimpse of lightning flickering between the peaks as she turned. Cheers and whoops rose from the tavern. A storm! Already the air was beginning to feel wet as the humidity rose. On any other evening, she would have celebrated with them, but all Lavellan could think was that when the thunder started, she would have to give up her search.

A horse’s squeal caught her attention. At the stables, the animals paced restlessly in their stalls, sticking their heads outside to watch the rain come in, ear swiveling. Lavellan frowned. She had asked the grooms if Cassandra had come by, but they said they hadn’t seen her…

One stall was quiet in the chaos. The proud gray Nevarren charger, bred from a line as old as the Pentaghast name, was not inside. Of course. Cassandra had raised that horse herself; she and Lavellan had talked about it one night, alone, when things were still innocent between them. She wouldn’t have needed to say a word to the grooms to tack up and leave Skyhold altogether.

“Excuse me — Riane, isn’t it?” Lavellan asked the nearest groom. “I need a horse saddled right away.”

The roads leading down from Skyhold were too steep for the reckless pace Lavellan wanted, but perhaps that was fortunate, because she had no idea how she would find Cassandra if she didn’t spot some trace of a trail. Her skills as a tracker had been honed in forests and marshes, where it was always wet and green. The thin mountain soil, which lost the shape of hoof-prints as quickly as they were made, was nearly unreadable. She did not have much time, either. The storm was moving quickly and wouldn’t forgive a hasty mistake that caused her to backtrack. So she went slowly, pitched so far forward in the saddle that she was in danger of falling, her eyes scouring the earth and her mouth knitting prayers to every god she could name.

There. A depression in the gravel, and then a patch of dry, trampled grass leading to a goat path. Lavellan knew it well. There was a hidden copse of pines and a spring about a half mile up it. It wasn’t useful, so the scouts had noted it on their surveys and moved on, but it had a spectacular view of the mountains. They had eaten a picnic out there once, the whole group of them; Cassandra had said it reminded her of a favorite sonnet about a falconer and his lady who stole away to the hills so no one could forbid their love.

Lavellan glanced up. The towering thunderhead leading the storm loomed a few miles out. The mountains beneath it were gray-green smudges, more like banks of fog than stone. Faintly, she felt thunder murmuring inside the clouds. She had to find Cassandra before the rainfall began and washed the path away. She nudged her horse into a canter.

“Cassandra!” she called when the first pine branches appeared around the corner. No human voice answered her, but a horse whinnied and hers responded in kind. She tugged lightly on the reins and leapt from the saddle just as the first drops of rain spattered against her bare arms. Cassandra’s charger was a gray ghost between the black trunks. He whinnied again when he saw her and ambled forward to bump her shoulder with his nose.

She’s here somewhere. Leaving her horse to browse through the thin grass, Lavellan wove through the trees. Her skin prickled as the temperature dropped. The grove was larger than she remembered, nearly double the size of the courtyard in Skyhold, and thick with undergrowth. Her second-in-command was nowhere to be seen.

“Where are you?” she cried. What if she’d wandered too near a precipice and fallen? “Cassandra? Please, if you can hear me —!”

“Lavellan?”

Ma serranas, evanuris. Lavellan spun and saw Cassandra standing a few yards away, out of breath, but safe. Her own lungs wouldn’t seem to work. Every unsaid thing hung heavy in the air between them. Then, with a crack like a spell going off, the thunderhead burst above them.

The cold rain shocked Lavellan more than the lightning could have. In the moment it took her to stride through the ferns, they were both soaked through. She stopped so they were almost nose-to-nose. Cassandra’s hands were warm when Lavellan clasped them in her own.

“I made a mistake,” she said.

Cassandra squeezed her numb fingers. “I think I did, too.”

They were standing so close that to kiss, they only had to let themselves go. Their eyes met, seeking permission and forgiveness all at once, and then there were only lips on lips. When Cassandra slid her arms around her waist, Lavellan sighed against her mouth. Her world became the taste of summer rain.

Thunder crackled almost on top of them. Cassandra pulled away, though she still clutched Lavellan’s forearms like the Herald might blow away.

“We should find shelter,” she half-shouted over the storm. “Do you remember the cave Harding showed us?”

Blinking water from her eyes, Lavellan nodded. “We used it as a cache because she said it wouldn’t flood.”

“Let us hope she knows cavern lore as well as she knows spy-work.”

After coaxing their nervous horses deeper into the trees where the sturdy branches could shelter them from the worst of the elements, the two women hiked farther up the slope until they found the mouth of the cave. As promised, it was dry inside. Bundles of preserved food and spare blankets were tucked against the back wall, and when Lavellan fished through them, she found a lantern and flint. They spread out all the blankets on the flattest part of the cave floor and then stood staring at each other in the wavering light.

“It’s getting cold,” Cassandra said, “and the sun is setting. We should not stay in these clothes…”

“I can take some of these to the other side,” Lavellan said, gesturing at the blankets.

“No, I would prefer…That is, if…”

Once again, they regarded each other like wary deer in a meadow, unsure of each other or themselves now that they were out in the open. Their clothes were already sticking to their wet skin, hiding little — Lavellan’s cream tunic was nearly transparent — but undressing was deliberate.

“I have no expectations,” said Cassandra. It almost drew a choked laugh out of Lavellan. That was the second time today a woman had promised her that.

“Neither do I,” she replied, and meant it.

Shyly, she peeled her wet tunic over her head, and then the linen chemise underneath. Her skin was clammy and her nipples were hard. She covered them with her hands self-consciously until Cassandra took a step closer.

“May I?” she asked.

When Lavellan nodded, she relaxed. Gently, she took each of Lavellan’s hands in hers and kissed her palms. Her hair was coming loose from its braids; strands of it fell across Lavellan’s breasts, dark as ink-stains. She bowed her head over Lavellan and sucked lightly on each of her nipples, just for a moment. Then she drew Lavellan’s hands to the hem of her own tunic.

Lavellan tugged the hem up a little at a time so she could kiss every bit of scarred olive skin she revealed. The scent of leather oil and the taste of salt seemed worn into her, as natural as the callouses Lavellan could feel on her fingers as Cassandra ran them through her hair. Those fingers suddenly took hold, tilting her head back and keeping it still as Cassandra kissed her boldly and urgently, like if she didn’t do it now, she would never have the chance again. Like she might starve without it.

Lavellan’s hand slid slowly to the ties on Cassandra’s chausses and waited there, a question.

“Yes,” Cassandra breathed.

Lavellan tilted her head down, which prompted a groan from her companion as she broke their kiss, and knelt to undo the ties. The padded trousers fell in a heap around Cassandra’s ankles. She was already wet; they both were. Lavellan massaged the muscles just above the soft, curling hair between Cassandra’s legs where her stomach was tense. One wall of the cave was near enough that Cassandra could lean back against it. Lavellan stood long enough to guide her there, hip against hip. Back on her knees, her hands settled lower and her fingers parted a different set of lips to be tenderly kissed.

“Oh,” Cassandra said when Lavellan’s tongue first slid across her clit. After that, words were too much.

It was easy to make her cum. She came hard and fast and silently, like she was still in a cloister where she might get caught. Lavellan ached to spoil her with the luxuries of her private room and her huge bed back at the keep, but that room and that bed would be a sore point between them for some time. Perhaps the cave was better. The cave was theirs alone.

Lavellan shimmied out of her trousers, too, after Cassandra had stopped shaking the second time and her knees had begun to buckle. In their small-clothes, they eased to the floor and wrapped themselves up in the blankets like two birds in a nest with only the heat of their hearts to warm them. They held each other for a moment. Cassandra rested her chin on Lavellan’s head.

“Forgive me,” she whispered. “I should have…I didn’t know…”

“I’m sorry, too, ma vhenan. For…what you saw.”

Cassandra’s arms tightened around her. “Is she truly so alluring?”

“No. Not the way you are. She was just there, and offering. I thought she could help. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I couldn’t work. I thought that if I slept with someone, maybe it would go away.” Lavellan smiled to herself. “We don’t always know exactly what we want.”

“Did you always know that you liked women?”

Lavellan was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “The Dalish are betrothed very young, sometimes at birth, so that our bloodlines are assured. We marry at sixteen. They do the same in the alienages, I hear. It is the only way to keep our people alive.”

“Are you already married, then? To a man?” Cassandra asked, alarmed.

“No. I was betrothed to a boy from another clan when I was four, but….”

Lavellan turned over her next words in her head, wondering how much to share, how much to trust.

“Those of us sworn to Dirthamen sever all such bonds,” she began. “We can never marry. We spend too much time outside, where we might bear children not of the clan. We are struck from the bloodline — we are essentially dead.” She swallowed. “I was still a girl when I was chosen for that path. I was frightened. Angry, at first. But when they told me my betrothal was broken, I was only relieved. I think that’s when I knew.”

Cassandra fidgeted. “Herald…I did not lie to you. I have always preferred the company of men,” she said. “Until I met you, I was never drawn to other women this way. I don’t know what that means. I’m…afraid.”

“Of what?”

“That you will not trust me.”

“Cassandra, you did not stop being you when we kissed. You are an honorable Seeker. Unfaithfulness dies in your shadow,” Lavellan said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. She turned over and stroked Cassandra’s cheek. “You have held my life in your hands since the moment we met, and here I am still. I trust you more than anyone, ma vhenan.”

For a few more minutes, neither of them spoke. They just breathed, in and out.

“I want to court you, Herald,” Cassandra said at last.

“The human way? With flowers and long walks on the parapets at night?”

“And poetry. Do not forget that.”

“Will we have to stop sleeping together until you’ve courted me enough?”

Even in the low light, she could pick out Cassandra’s furious blush. “No. I would not like to stop. That is, unless you would prefer…If it isn’t proper, we could…”

“I have never cared much for what is proper.” Lavellan smiled and settled back against her. “I like your poems. Tell me the one about the falconer again.”

With a smile of her own, Cassandra cleared her throat and began to recite. She stroked Lavellan’s hair while she did, and each pause in the lines was punctuated with a kiss on the top of her head. Lavellan closed her eyes and listened to her lover’s voice while the storm rumbled outside.

* * *

In the gardens of Skyhold, the rain had startled a riot of scents from the dry herbs — light, floral elfroot, tangy arbor blessing, sickly-sweet blood lotus. The evening shadows softened the sharp lines of architecture until, out of the corner of one’s eyes, it looked almost like a forest. The first golden lamps of the night floated on windowsills like errant stars. Morrigan sat on a bench under the arcade with a shawl around her shoulders and her feet tucked underneath her. Her gaze rested very far away.

“My scouts spotted them in a pine grove,” said Leliana, emerging from a doorway and alighting on the bench beside her old companion. She handed Morrigan a goblet of mulled wine. “They will escort them back in the morning. I thought it best to give them some privacy tonight. Tomorrow, we can finally get some work done.”

Morrigan toasted her. “To a scheme well-executed.”

“The glory goes to you, or so I hear. Well done. How did you know Cassandra would find out?” Leliana asked.

“Varric. He’s too shrewd not to know lovesickness when it’s moping around the castle like a surly hound. His curiosity wouldn’t let it lie. I just made sure to move before he did.”

“You could have left it at that.”

“If I had, they would have spent the next month dancing around each other like nervous teenagers.” Morrigan sipped her wine. “Jealousy clarifies things. Besides, these days I hardly ever get to have that kind of fun without fussing over treaties and alliances first.”

Leliana made a thoughtful noise. “Do you think Lavellan will be angry with you?”

“Not for bedding her,” Morrigan said. “But if the good Seeker does not throw down her gauntlet for her lady’s honor at the next war council, I will be insulted.”

Something wry tugged at Leliana’s mouth but made no headway: her smiles had fallen out of use long ago. “So what was it like sleeping with the Herald of Andraste?”

“Oh, ‘twas awful. Nothing but visions of the holy bitch herself scowling at us for sinning. You would have loved it.”

That did prompt a laugh, small as it was, from Leliana. Her companion only looked into her wine, though. Her focus was still somewhere Leliana couldn’t see.

“She reminds me of Tabris,” Morrigan said. Her voice was uncharacteristically small. “Sometimes I wish I had…”

The blood mage trailed off and swirled the dregs of her mulled wine around in the goblet for a long while. Leliana didn’t push her. They both stared at the rain as the last rays of the sunset slipped beneath the storm and gilded the underside of the clouds. Together, they watched the soil turn to mud, washing away what was dry and dead, making ready for new things to grow.

**Author's Note:**

> Chausses: A kind of padded hose worn under armor, a little like modern riding chaps.
> 
> Dildos and strap-ons made of leather or other materials are attested as early as ancient Greece and China.
> 
> After keeping my closeted, sex-repulsed butt out of the smut scene during my prime teenaged fanfic-writing years, I have decided to re-enter the arena as an adult. Please be gentle with me.


End file.
